Turkish Delight

Sterling was warming up with the first team on Saturday. It will be interesting to see if he gets any game time in the coming months.

To be honest, I hated that at the time because I thought he was affected by it and by reading that I might have been right. Still a very shite keeper for us though.

I'm quite saddened by the lack of response to this petition. I don't know Anne Williams personally but with the dignity she has shown in the fight to get justice for her son you would think just about anyone who has heard what happened would be prepared to spend 10 seconds of their time to help her. Sadly that doesn't seem to be the case.

The defence this season has been good because we don't commit midfielders forward. That's also the reason why the attack has been shite as we don't stretch even the worst teams. It very, very rarely happens that we ever have a midfielder breaking into the box. Everyone knows we signed a chunk of mediocre players last Summer for big money and the question now is whether we can afford to correct the mistakes made. It's no coincidence that the football we played at the end of last season was on a different level to what we play now and personally I would have no place for any of Downing, Adam or Carroll or my first XI.

I've been to Chelsea, Stoke and City away in the League Cup so far but still don't qualify for the home game and most likely won't. These arrangements are fair as they are based on previous rounds unlike the League Cup.

Haha I missed the main point of my post. I think he is a Manc which in turn makes him a cheating cunt.

The whole refereeing system in this country is designed in a way that conflict of interest is quite probable. Pretty much every referee in this country will have a team they support and many Premier League referees will either end up officiating matches that will either involve their team or that will affect them in some way. To suggest that every one of them is neutral and fair would be very unrealistic in my opinion.

I'm sick of hearing how good Adam's set pieces are. They are fucking woeful and he needs to be taken off them. On the short corners topic. I have nothing against them if they are done scarcely and cleverly to catch the other team out but it really pisses me off when we take one where the defender is already over covering. It highlights just how little game intelligence some of our players have.

Sky don't have rights for the FA Cup.

I understand that was at least partially aimed at me. To be fair no matter what the ultimate outcome of this one I understand that internet interest is not worth the paper it's written on. In this case, I was a little pre-emptive as a Villa fan I know (who in turn probably doesn't know much) was banging on about Bent coming to Liverpool last week and then I saw this thread. Regardless of this, from everything I have seen of Comolli's work both here and at Tottenham I'm not convinced he is the person we should be putting our trust in over new signings.

That's my thoughts exactly.

Comolli bases most of his approach on Moneyball. He is almost certainly behind our interest but he's behind it because the stats fit what he's looking for.

It might not be the be all and end all but they recruited Comolli who in football terms is probably its biggest advocate. In addition to that most of the players we've signed in the last 12 months fit the Moneyball approach very nicely. Especially Adam, Downing and Henderson who Comolli was quick to point stats out about when they signed.

It would be a typical signing for us given our approach of stats now meaning everything. The fact is that he's scored most of his goals for shit teams where the opposition give him lots of time and space to run into because they are committing players to attack. That's a completely different world to trying to find space in a penalty area with 6 or 7 defenders in and it's never been proven he can adapt to that. He's also shit at passing and not particularly skillful so if he isn't the player on the end of the move it will more often than not break down with him. He is a decent finisher and I'm sure the stats make him look like a world beater but I just don't think that he would fit into our team or be as prolific in the circumstances. Simply because his all round game just isn't very good and the opposition we play every week are set up differently to how they would be against Villa, Sunderland or Charlton. This Moneyball shite will end up bankrupting us if we continue to splash out on 20 million pound plus gambles. In football, minor tactical detail can affect every single percentage of what you do in the game. If you're an attacking midfielder who is man-to-man marked every week and your team play one up top it's harder to produce the killer pass to boost your individual stats than if the opposition sit off you and let you play to one of four players who are breaking and in space. Similarly, if you're a striker with the freedom of the penalty area it's easier to score than if you have a crowded goalmouth. Moneyball ignores this detail and it won't work as a result. The sooner we learn that lesson the better.

I was thinking of him for the over 50's so it was a nice little bonus when I saw that!

Abdelbaset al Megrahi (Lockerbie bomber) - 1952 Hosni Mubarak - 1928 Buzz Aldrin - 1930 Phil Spector - 1939 John Prescott - 1938 Joe Kinnear - 1946 Tom Hicks - 1946 Under 50 Peter Kay - 1973 George Michael - 1963 Under 30 James Wade - 1983 As for Robin Gibb I'll say February 14th.

Statement from the FA Liverpool Football Club have been fined £20,000 by The FA and warned as to their future conduct for failing to ensure their players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion during the league fixture at Fulham on December 5 2011 The club admitted the charge, which was in relation to the dismissal of Jay Spearing, but did not accept the standard £20,000 penalty for the offence. However, at an Independent Regulatory Commission hearing today [Wednesday 28 December] the fine was imposed. Meanwhile, Liverpool player Luis Suarez will begin a one match suspension with immediate effect after he admitted an FA charge of improper conduct in relation to the same game. Suarez was also fined £20,000 and warned as to his future conduct following a gesture he made towards the Fulham fans at the end of the fixture. Are we really that fucking stupid that we would accept a charge with a standard fine and then challenge whether we should pay the fine? Is it really worth looking like amateurs when we have a big appeal coming up over Suarez? Some serious alarm bells are starting to ring about how the club is being run at the moment between this, the handling of the Suarez affair and the ticketing policies. Has someone let Davey Moores and Coco back on the board?

I agree. It's also a case of punish the foreigner but ignore any example ever of an Englishman doing the same thing.

Downing has created chances this season which for mean the lack of assists are not a major issue in isolation. My problem is with his all round game. The truth is he can't beat a man for either pace or skill, his passing is not at the level of most of his team-mates and he offers very little goalscoring threat. The flip side is for every half a dozen crosses at least one will be excellent. As has been mentioned we just don't get enough men into the box and this negates his strengths to an extent. On a related topic, I am strongly of the opinion that Moneyball will not translate to football as there are far more variables at play in terms of tactics than exist in sports like baseball. It's all very well looking at how many assists someone had at Sunderland, Blackpool or Villa but in all seriousness the tactics that most opposition sides employ against those teams are far different to those they will employ against Liverpool. For example, if you look at almost every game we've played at Anfield this season the opposition have played very deep with the intention (successfully in most cases) of frustrating us. A large percentage of those teams when they have played Villa for example have gone toe-to-toe with them as they feel they can beat them. This means that as a winger at Liverpool you are faced with more defensive players to compete against and in many cases far less space than if the opposition is being caught on the counter attack and you're three against three. It's a different game and what we really need are players who can pass and move at pace and we just don't have enough of them. We play too slow and it means when opportunities are created they usually (although not always) have some level of pressure on them which restricts where a shot can go. As someone who has played in goal myself if you can read when the attacker is about to shoot you have a much better chance of saving the shot. It's usually in these cases that you make stunning saves as you've reacted even before the ball has been struck. If the ball is pulled back to someone 10 yards out who has time and can take more than one touch before placing the ball anywhere then you have far less chance of saving. The truth is for all the chances we create we very rarely carve teams open and have chances under little pressure. This is why we are making goalkeepers look good. Luck is also a factor in why we haven't scored enough but in my opinion the fact is that the number of shots we have disguises that we just aren't that good at opening teams up.

I don't see the point if I'm honest. The most fitting response would be to win it and then leave the FA goons standing around at the top of the steps totally humiliated waiting to present it while we celebrate on the pitch. Let the fuckers post it to us.

I didn't know that. Total incompetence if true.

You definitely have a point on whether our people are up to it. My own personal opinion is that outside of our own fanbase people just don't like us very much. People such as Holt or Lipton will occasionally write nice things about us where they have to but love to stick the boot in when they have the chance. The reason the papers are so happy to do it is simply that they see no repercussions from the club and know that the majority of the country will lap it up. As for the FA, my opinion is it's as corrupt as FIFA. If there was a proper process in place anybody with a vested interest would not be considered for the committee but somehow a close personal friend of Ferguson's is on a 3 man panel. The FA can't be expected to be neutral across all clubs when it has people such as David Gill, Phil Gartside and David Sheepshanks on the board who clearly will have their own clubs' vested interests at heart rather than the interests of the national game. I would be very interested to hear how that panel was appointed.

The problem is we could try and be all nice with people in the media but the reality is we'll get fucked over massively for it and there is no way papers like the Mirror will print 'Racist' as a headline today and then back-up our argument tomorrow. The only way being nice to the media works is if you play to them constantly like 'Arry or Mourinho in which case they'll love you forever for constantly filling their pages and fortunately Kenny is nothing like them 2 cunts. The net effect of Ferguson not giving interviews to the BBC is that now he's decided to do them everybody on there is queuing up to kiss his shitty arse to make sure it doesn't happen again while it hasn't damaged United's brand in the slightest.

Low scoring night tonight and Daniel Sturridge to get it tomorrow. Backed him at 125/1 yesterday. You heard it hear first.

I have to say in the same circumstances Ferguson would tell them all to get to fuck. We may criticise him for it but they all eat out of his hand off the back of it and we shouldn't allow them to walk all over us with the shite that they write.